


walking travesty

by streetlight_skeletons



Series: Voices [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Hurt Bucky, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Suicide, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-10
Updated: 2016-08-10
Packaged: 2018-08-07 19:34:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7727125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/streetlight_skeletons/pseuds/streetlight_skeletons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Looking back, Bucky realises that he hasn't had many good relationships with men his entire life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	walking travesty

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again!  
> Yes, another part in the series, this time named after a beautiful All Time Low song.  
> Warning: suicide and child abuse mentioned  
> There is a minor character in the story that commits suicide and a slight mention of child abuse, so if you're sensitive to those kinds of things, know that you don't have to read this.
> 
> Enjoy!

"You should see someone, you know," Natasha comments quietly, carefully not looking in Bucky's direction even though the statement is clearly aimed towards him. She sits on a stool by the kitchen island, chewing on cashew nuts as she plays solitaire and somehow looking as graceful and beautiful as ever in grey sweats, a black sauna jacket and a dark blue baseball cap. Bucky is kind of in awe.

Bucky turns back to the newspaper he's not reading and takes a long gulp of his (cold) coffee. After a while, he clears his throat and says gruffly, "I already am going out with someone."

Natasha looks up sharply. "No, that's not what I meant."

"Then what _did_ you mean."

She sighs heavily and looks over Bucky's right shoulder, as if she can't bear to meet his eye and that immediately makes Bucky feel on edge and slightly confused.  
  
"I was an assassin, James," she says evenly. Bucky winces at the use of his name, even though she refuses to call him by anything else. "And a good one, at that. But the stuff that I did wasn't good, and I need to live with that -"

Bucky shakes his head and interrupts, "It wasn't your fault."

"Hypocrite," Natasha snorts and Bucky ducks his head. She continues with a sigh, "So, what I'm trying to say, is that you should see a therapist."

"No."

"James, come on, I would never do anything that would hurt you. Don't you trust me?"

"Don't guilt trip me."

"Right, okay," Natasha sets down her cards and folds her hands on the table, giving him her full attention and Bucky knows she's planned this, "I was like you, but when I trusted this therapist eventually, it was the best decision I've ever made. And I mean it. Just try it, please, for me?"

And how could Bucky refuse.

* * *

The therapist that Natasha suggests has to be fully checked out by SHIELD and given clearance to even be near him. Everything he says is strictly confidential, even more so than usual, because, as everyone knows, his history is a violent one, and he hasn't made it to where he is today without picking up a few enemies that would want nothing less than his head.

Most of the time, SHIELD would dig up some type of dirt on people pretty easily, or people would falter at how much of their life is scrutinised and back out, but SHIELD can find nothing on the proposed counsellor and she doesn't back out. Grudgingly, Bucky is impressed at the women's determination and how seemingly trustworthy she is. It makes him uneasy, in fact, that SHIELD could find no dirt on this women, because surely no one could be that clean without someone wiping up after them. Bucky is nervous for their first meeting, though not that he would admit.

When they finally do meet, a month after Bucky decided he wanted to try this whole therapy thing, he finds out that her name is Jean, and she is not as threatening as Bucky thought she would be.

Jean Campbell is around 50 and has the face of a women that has lived a good life and knows it. She's got blond hair that's cropped short so that it spikes up in an effort to make her look younger, and dark purple glasses that curl around her ears and rest daintily on her nose as if they were always there. Lines run deep ravines across the plain of her forehead, but somehow the wrinkles enhance her looks instead of ruin them. She's tall, not as tall as Bucky but with the right heels she could tower over him, which, for some reason, unnerves him.

As soon as she sits down in front of him, she morphs her face into an open, concerned expression that makes Bucky think that she would be a good mother. Instead of putting him of edge, like he expected it would, the expression makes him relax because there's not a hint of pity in her face and immediately Bucky knows that he is going to like this woman.

It reminds him of when he was little, way back in the 1920s and 1930s, when he used to play on the streets and come home with bleeding knees. It reminds him of when his mother would see them, and she would get this pinched scowl that hid her worry and she would always plant a kiss on his newly-cleaned battle wound before playfully whacking his bum as he ran outside to play again.

When he grew older and met Steve, the pinched scowl had changed into a concerned frown as he began to come home with more cuts and bruises from fights that Steve was too righteous to walk away from and too weak to finish. After seeing his mother's face after a particularly bad scrap that left him hobbling around for a week, from then on he snuck in the back door and licked his wounds by himself in his room.

But his mother always knew that he had been in a fight when he would come into the kitchen with a new cut that would add to the growing collection of scars, and he always had to turn his head away when she would gaze at him with a broken look in her eye. It was in those moments that Bucky would remember that that was the exact same look his mother gave his father when he would come home from the local bar drunk after work, bleeding blood and booze from cuts that he got in the recent bar fight.

He didn't like to remind his mother or his little sister of his father, and Bucky felt dirty being compared to him, so he started to distance himself from his family in an effort to keep the peace. Looking back, he maybe could have stopped helping Steve in fights, but the boy was hardly 10 stone soaking wet, so someone needed to stick up for him and Bucky seemed to be the only one willing to do it.

It almost seems like role reversal now. Steve is the only one that wants to help him now.

When Bucky mentally shakes himself from his thoughts, he finds Jean gazing at him with soft, sorry eyes, as if she was following his train of thoughts what the whole time. He doesn't feel the need to break the silence that has descended, so he doesn't, and neither does Jean. He looks out the window at the river and notices swans paddling along the bank between the reeds.

"So," Jean starts, after a while. Bucky finds her voice surprisingly, but pleasantly, soft. He wonders if she would be a good singer. His mother used to sing in the church choir every Sunday and went to rehearsals every Tuesday. "How are you?"

And isn't _that_ a loaded question.

Regardless, Bucky has always been the type of person to love a good challenge. He settles back into his seat and finds it surprisingly easy to lay out decades of pain at her feet. Maybe it's because she reminds him of his mother.

* * *

 

He doesn't know where to begin, at first, but after a while it clicks with him that he should start at the beginning. Of him. Of his life

So he does.

He starts to explain how growing up in the 20th century was very different than growing up now, in the 21st century, and Jean just nods. He explains how he never really did well in school but he thinks he would have done better if he had gotten on better with the first teacher that he had.

He remembers how he was so excited to go to school, how he couldn't wait to learn and how proud his mother was as she waved him through the school gates.

He remembers how his childish ignorance of the harshness of the world was shattered when Mr Collins caught him trying to write with his left hand. He remembers how humiliated he was when his teacher tied his left hand behind his back and shouted at him to write with his right hand.

He remembers the tears of frustration that clung to his lashes while he desperately tried to write neater but never could and he remembers how confused he was as a young boy because _he didn't know what he did wrong._

He tells her about how Mr Collins told him he would never amount to anything, and how, with tears in his eyes, he believed him wholeheartedly.

Bucky wonders if the fates hate him, when his left arm was torn from his body. Despite the fact that Tony has made his metal arm sensitive enough to write with, he writes with his right hand now.

* * *

 

He tells her about Steve, back when he was little and brittle, and he doesn't even know he's smiling fondly until she grins wolfishly at him. He finds he doesn't care one bit.

He tells her about Steve, back when he was little and brittle, and he doesn't even know why he feels the familiar sting of tears behind his eyes.

* * *

 

When his mouth is dry and his throat hurts from talking, they end the session. Jeans doesn't say anything, says she won't until she hears all of his worries and problems and to the point she's heard, Bucky hasn't even joined the army yet.

Bucky finds that talking to her isn't all that bad and he books an appointment for the next week.

* * *

The next session begins on a bad note. Bucky didn't sleep the night before and he's irritable. He hasn't said anything in the 20 minutes he's been there and Jean isn't pushing. She's just staring at him or the wall or the window and doesn't seem to care that he's wasting her time.

Bucky doesn't know how it happens, but the silence helps. Usually, he hates silence, because silence reminds him of disapproval and disappointment and silence reminds him of falling off a train and laying in the snow for ( _minutes, hours, days_ ) God knows how long with his left arm nowhere to be seen. Usually, he hates silence.

But this time, the silence seems almost muted. Like a blanket that keeps him warm and safe, when usually it feels like the blanket that's around his neck about to suffocate him. When Bucky glances out the window to his right and sees swans, he suddenly feels like talking, and the silence gently encourages him.

The swans are elegantly beautiful, so majestic and graceful. They effortlessly glide across the gently rippling river and Bucky instantly feels a sense of peace wash over him. The swans remind him of a story and he tells Jean this, and she nods with a soft smile, as if to say ' _go ahead_ '.

Swans always remind him of Tuesdays.

Tuesday was the day that he met up with Steve after a frankly impressive bruise rose up on his cheek. Bucky still remembers how Steve's features darkened as his little body drew itself up and how he immediately snapped into Mother Mode, as Bucky silently termed it, whenever Bucky got even remotely hurt. Tuesday was that same day, when Bucky was too quiet and even pure, innocent Steve could tell that there was something else beneath the surface that Bucky just couldn't say out loud because he couldn't get the words out.

Tuesday was the day that Bucky had a bruise on his cheek and Steve took him to the lake with bread that he couldn't afford to waste but did so on Bucky's behalf. He did it because Bucky liked to watch the ducks and swans and he found it funny when they would paddle towards them and dive underwater to get the sinking, water-logged bread. Tuesday was the day that Bucky's hands were shaking so much he couldn't even tear the bread. Tuesday was the day that Steve didn't say anything about it but instead gently eased the bread out of Bucky's hands, tore it up for him, gave it back and sat back with nothing but a deep furrow in his brow.

He scared Steve that day, he could tell. He could tell in the wary eyes that followed him for weeks after the bruise faded, the eyes that watched his hands closely for even a little hint of a shake. He could tell in the way that Steve didn't go picking fights for a month afterwards and when he did, how he would never tell Bucky about it. Although Bucky never told him what happened that day, Steve packed a lot of brains in that tiny body of his and he never had to explain himself.

That wasn't his first bruise, though, far from it. At that stage, he had dealt with many fights and held quite a few victories under his belt, and no battle could be won without a few black eyes or bloody noses. But Tuesday was the first fight he met his father's fist, and, for some reason, it hurt more than any other fight he had been in before.

Bucky turns his head away from the swans and stops talking. That's it for that session and they book to see each other the next week.

* * *

Jean asks about it. The day he fell from the train. How he _felt_.

Falling is a lot like flying, he found out. Perhaps a bit more concerned about the destination, but the pull of gravity in his gut as he raced the snowflakes to the ground is a feeling he will never forget. His mother always called him 'her little angel' when he was a kid, ignoring the teachers and neighbours that called him anything but. Bucky should have realised that angels always fall, despite having wings to fly.

He blearily remembers his arm suddenly being a stump, and he remembers how it _hurt_. Muscles and tendons and bone all torn from his body and he remembers feeling _empty_. He remembers how he blinked slowly as the cold seeped into his body as the blood seeped out and he remembers how he screamed for help first, then Steve and then for anybody but no one came. He remembers being _lonely_ and _scared_.

He remembers red blood, white snow and blue fingers. Bucky remembers laughing hysterically before the soldiers found him because _how patriotic_.

* * *

When he first got accepted into the army, he was proud. He was proud because he knew that his mother would have been proud of him, even if she wasn't there to tell him. He was proud and he strutted about his uniform so that everyone knew, and people suddenly _respected_ him. They nodded to him and smiled at him on the street, they didn't shun him or beat him up.

It's only now, older and wiser, that he realises that they didn't respect him anymore than they did before. It's just, seeing the uniform and almost childish naïvety, they realised that he wouldn't be coming home. That most likely, he'd be sent over to France with his cheeky grin and it would be shot off his face, figuratively or literally. So they treated him kindly, because they knew he wouldn't find much kindness overseas.

When he finally did make it overseas, his battalion at his back instead of Steve, he realised that he didn't really have anything to be proud of. He found out that war wasn't something to be boasted about.

The whole wartime charisma produced from the propaganda evaporated as soon as he and his fellow soldiers touched ground. It poured from the Heavens most days, out of the dull, grey skies and mud was plentiful as a result. The mud helped as an excuse to drag their feet, as it was clung on to their boots, determined to keep its prize.

Even though they were fairly far behind the front line, wounded soldiers still came into the camp, hollering and screaming for their mamas and papas in a frantic panic of pain. When there was a large wave of wounded, the new recruits had to chip in, carrying those with injuries so severe they couldn't walk from the hospital carts to the medical tent. Bucky remembers how he and another man carried an injured soldier who was alive at the cart but dead by the time they got to the tent. Bucky thinks he remembers hearing the man's last breath.

It all became too much for some poor souls who weren't cut out for the military, and Bucky got it, he really did. Most ran away, under the cloak of darkness, or slipped away during a mission, in the middle of the fighting. He didn't know if they made it away from the barracks or if they were caught, but Bucky never saw nor heard from them again.

Some, however, had seen too much and been through too much.

Bucky still remembers how hard his hands were shaking when Private Milligan, young, blond and scared, whipped his pistol haphazardly around their tent. He remembers the glazed look of terror in the young boy's face, as he waved his weapon between Bucky and the other tent inhabitants, as he called out to mama in nightmare-induced fear. He remembers how all five of them tried to calm him down, in the dead of night, as his frantic shouts attracted attention from other soldiers in surrounding tents.

The Officer had rushed into their tent, intent on ordering them to get back to bed like unruly children. He stopped short of the gun pointed at his forehead and Bucky had frozen, wide-eyed and terrified, at the image of the Private murdering his Commanding Officer.

"Put the gun down, son," the Officer had said, drawing up to his full height while he raised his hands up in a placating manner, "Don't be stupid, now."

"Sir, I'm not cut out for the army," Private Milligan had stuttered out, and his hand shaking as much as Bucky's was. The poor boy had tears streaming down his cheeks, begging the older man to understand him, to _help_ him.

The Officer had huffed. "No, I don't think you are either. You can't even pull the trigger, can you?"

Bucky remembers the incredulous little gasp that fell off his own lips. He remembers how the Private's eyes hardened before Bucky realised his intentions and he remembers how he leapt forward, his hand outstretched, reaching for the gun as his mouth opened with a shout. He remember how he was _too slow_.

Within a second, Private Milligan brought the gun to rest beneath his chin and pulled the trigger. He fell to the floor like a puppet with his strings cut, the back of his skull on the roof of the tent. Blood seeped into the mud and mixed with the rainwater. In the resounding silence, the Officer, unfazed, stepped forward to pick up the gun from lifeless fingers.

"What a waste," the Officer had commented airily, as if he's just seen the weather prospects for tomorrow. He had then stood back with his hands on his hips, staring down at the cooling body of the Private with a vague sense of distaste. "He actually had the balls and proved me wrong. Anyway, the Germans would have done 'im in anyway."

For the first time since he joined the army, Bucky wasn't so sure if the enemy is the only evil. Staring into the eyes of Phillip Milligan, Bucky had never been so scared in his entire life.

* * *

 

 _Very little_ , is what Bucky first thinks when he first sees him in a glaring white lab coat and spectacles too big for his face, _not little like Steve, but still very little._

Bucky doesn't know this yet, but the man he calls 'little' will make his life very, very difficult in a not so little way, when he is lying on a cold, metal table with his arm roughly 20 miles away.

( _they never found it, it's still out there_ ).

 _Maybe he's compensating_ , Bucky thinks with a huff of amusement.

* * *

 

After a few sessions, Jean makes a comment. There's a moment of silence when she stares at Bucky with a pinched, thoughtful expression. The lines on her forehead deepen as she tilts her head to the right and she folds her hands on her lap.

After a while, looking pleased with herself, Jean says, "You have a problem with male figures in your life"

And Bucky thinks about laughing because _I have a problem with a lot of things_ and _I am a male figure_ and _what life?_. But Bucky hasn't laughed in 8 months so he doesn't. It's not because he's forgotten how to.

_It isn't._

* * *

He doesn't know how to fix this. But he has to, so he tries.

Hopefully he'll get there.

( _You won't_ )

**Author's Note:**

> Remember to leave a like or comment in you liked it! x


End file.
